LESSON NINETEEN

We have from time to time mentioned the Akashic Record. Now let us discuss this most
fascinating subject, for the Akashic Record is something which concerns every person and
every creature who has ever lived. With the Akashic Record we can travel back along
history, we can see all that has happened, not merely upon this world but upon other
worlds also, for the scientist is now coming to realize what occultists have always known,
that other worlds are occupied by other persons not necessarily human but sentient beings
nonetheless.
Before we can say much about the Akashic Record we have to know something about the
nature of energy or matter. Matter, we are told, is indestructible, it goes on for ever.
Waves, electric waves, are indestructible. Scientists have recently found that if a current
is induced in a coil of copper wire, the temperature of which is reduced to as near absolute
zero as possible, the induced current carries on and on and on, and never grows less. We
all know that at normal temperatures the current would soon diminish and die out because
of various resistances. So science has found a new medium; science has found that if
a copper conductor be reduced sufficiently in temperature a current continues to flow and
remain the same without any outside source of energy. In time scientists will discover that
Man has other senses, other abilities, but that will not be discovered yet for the scientist
proceeds slowly and not always surely!
We said that waves are indestructible. Let us look at the behaviour of light waves. Light
reaches us from far far distant planets in universes remote from our own. Great telescopes
on this Earth are probing out into space, in other words, they are gathering light from
vastly distant places. Some of the planets from which we receive light sent out that

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light long before this world, or even this universe, came into existence. Light is a very fast
thing indeed, the speed of light is so fast that we can hardly imagine it but that is because
we are in human bodies and are greatly bogged down with all sorts of physical limitations.
What we consider to be fast here has a different meaning in a different plane of
existence. By way of illustration let us say that a round of existence for a human is
seventy-two thousand years. During that round a person comes again and again to
different worlds, to different bodies. The seventy-two thousand years, then, is the length
of our school term.
When we refer to light instead of radio or electric waves or other waves, we do so merely
because light can be observed without any equipment, a radio wave cannot. We can see
the light of the sun, the light of the moon, and if we have a good telescope or a powerful
pair of binoculars we can see the light of the far distant stars which started out before
Earth was even a cloud of hydrogen molecules floating in space.
Light is also used as a measure of time or distance. Astronomers refer to light years,
and we are going to tell you again that light coming from a far distant world may still be
travelling after that world has ceased to exist, from which it is clear that we may be getting
a picture from something which is no longer there, something which died years ago. If
you find that difficult to understand, look at it in this way; we have a star out in the remote
fastnesses of space. For years, for centuries, that star has been reflecting light waves
down to Earth. The light waves may take a thousand, ten thousand, or a million years to
reach Earth, because a star, the source of the light, is so very distant. One day the star is
in collision with another star, there may be a great flash of light or there may be extinction.
For our purpose let us say that there is total extinction. So the light is gone, but for a
thousand or ten thousand, or a million years after the light is gone, light still reaches us
because it takes all that time to cover the distance between the original source of light
and ourselves. Thus, we should be seeing light after its source ceases to exist.
Let us assume something which is utterly impossible while we are in the physical body,
but which is quite easy and commonplace when out of the body. Let us assume that we
can travel faster than thought. We need to travel faster than thought because thought has
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speed as any doctor can tell you. It is actually known how quickly a person reacts to any
given situation, how quickly or how slowly a person can put on the brakes of a car, or
move the wheel to swerve aside. It is known how quickly thought impulses travel from
head to toe. We, for the purpose of this discussion, want to travel instantly. Let us imagine
that we can go instantly to a planet which is receiving light which was emitted from the
Earth three thousand years ago. So we upon this distant planet will be receiving light sent
from the Earth three thousand years ago. Supposing we have a telescope of quite
unimagined type with which we can see the surface of the Earth, or interpret the rays of
light reaching us, then this light sent out three thousand years ago would show us scenes
of the world enacted at that time. We should see life as it was in ancient Egypt, we would
see the barbarous Western world where people ran about covered in woad or less, and in
China we should find quite a high civilization so much different from what is there at
the present time!
If we could instantly travel closer, we should see quite different pictures. Let us move to
a planet which is so distant from the Earth that light takes a thousand years for it to travel
between that planet and Earth. Then we should see scenes of Earth as they were enacted
a thousand years ago, we should see a high civilization in India, we should see the spread
of Christianity throughout the Western world, and perhaps some of the invasions of South
America. The world would also look somewhat different from its present appearance
because all the time a coast line is altering, land is rising from the sea, shores are being
eroded. In a lifetime not much difference is noted, but a thousand years would give us a
chance to see and appreciate the difference.
At present we are upon a world which has most remarkable limitations, we are able to
perceive and to receive impressions on only a very limited range of frequencies. If we
could see some of our out of the body abilities to the full as we can in the astral world,
we should see things in a very different light, we should perceive that all matter is indeed
indestructible, every experience that ever has been on the world is still radiating outward
in the form of waves. With special abilities we should intercept those waves in much the
same way as we can intercept waves of light. Take as a simple example of this an ordinary
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projector; you switch on your slide projector in a darkened room and you put a slide in
the appropriate place. If you put a screen a white screen for preference in front of
the lens of the projector at a certain distance from it, and you focus the light on the screen,
you see a picture. But if you have your projector projecting its picture out of the window
and into the darkness beyond, you see just a faint beam of light with no picture. It follows
that the light must be intercepted, must be reflecting on something before it can be fully
perceived and appreciated. Take a searchlight on a clear and cloudless night; you might
see a faint tracery of light, but only when the searchlight impinges on a cloud or upon an
aeroplane do you actually see it as it is.
It has long been the dream of Man to have a thing called time travel. This, obviously, is
a fantastic conception while one is in the flesh and upon the Earth, because here in the
flesh we are sadly limited, our bodies are most imperfect instruments, and as we are here
to learn we have implanted in us much doubt, much indecision, and before we can be
convinced we want proof the ability to pull a thing to pieces to see how it works and
to make sure it does not work again. When we get beyond the Earth and into the astral,
or even beyond the astral, time travel is as simple as upon Earth is a visit to a cinema or
a theatre.
The Akashic Record, then, is a form of vibration, not necessarily light vibrations because
it also embraces sound. It is a form of vibration which upon Earth has no term which can
describe it. The nearest one can do is to liken it to a radio wave. We have about us at all
times radio waves coming in from all parts of the world; every one of them brings in a
different program, different languages, different music, different times. It is possible that
waves are coming in from one part of the world which contains a program which, to us, is
being broadcast tomorrow! All these waves are coming to us constantly, but we are
oblivious to them, and not until we have some mechanical device which we call a radio
set can we receive those waves and slow them down so that they become audible and
comprehensible to us. Here, with a mechanical or electrical device, we slow down radio
frequency waves and convert them to audio frequency waves. In much the same way, if,
on Earth, we could slow down the wave of the Akashic Record we should undoubtedly be
able to put authentic historical scenes on the television screen, and then the

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historians would throw a fit when they saw that the history as printed in books is
completely, completely wrong!
The Akashic Record is the indestructible vibrations consisting of the sum total of human
knowledge which emanates from the world in much the same way as the radio program
is broadcast, it goes on and on. Everything that has happened on this Earth still exists in
vibration form. When we get out of the body we do not use a special device to understand
these waves; we use nothing to slow them down, instead, in getting out of the body, our
own wave receptors are speeded up so that, with practice, with training, we can receive
that which we term the Akashic Record.
Let us get back to this problem of outstripping light. It will be easier if we forget about
light for the moment, and deal instead with sound because sound is slower and we do not
have to have such vast distances before getting results. Supposing you are standing out
in the open and you suddenly hear a very fast moving jet plane. You hear the sound but
it is useless to look up to that point from whence the sound appears to be coming because
the jet plane is going faster than the sound, and so will be ahead of the sound itself. In
World War 2 great rockets were sent from enslaved Europe to cause destruction in
England. The rockets crashed down on houses, wrecking them and killing people. The first
warning that people had that these rockets were about was the noise of the explosion and
the crashing of falling stones, and the screams of the injured. Later, when the dust was
subsiding somewhat, came the sound of the rocket arriving! This quite weird experience
was caused by the fact that the rocket travelled so very much faster than the sound it
made. Hence it was that the rocket did all its destruction before its sound arrived!
One can stand on a hilltop and look at a gun placed perhaps upon another hilltop. One
cannot hear the shell from the gun when it is exactly over one, but the sound comes
shortly after when the shell is still speeding off into the distance. No person has ever been
killed by a shell which he heard, for the shell arrives first and the sound later. That is why
it is so amusing when people in wars used to duck at the sound of a shell passing overhead.
Actually, if they could hear the sound it meant that the shell had passed by. Sound is slow
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light. Standing again upon this hilltop we can look at a gun being fired, we can see the
flash from the muzzle, and much later the time depending upon the distance we are
from the gun we hear the sound of the shell passing overhead. You might have watched
a man chopping a tree; the man would be some distance away, you would actually see
the axe hitting the tree trunk, and then a short time after you would hear the thunk-
thunk of the sound. This is an experience which most of us have had.
The Akashic Record contains the knowledge of everything that has happened on this world.
Worlds elsewhere have their own Akashic Records in much the same way as countries
outside our own have their own radio programs. Those who know how can tune into the
Akashic Record of any world, not merely of one's own, and one can then see events of
history, one can see how the history books have been falsified. But there is more to the
Akashic Record than just satisfying idle curiosity one can look into this Record and see
what went wrong with one's own plans. When we die to the Earth we go to another plane
of existence where every single one of us has to face up to what we did, or what we did
not, do; we see the whole of our past life with the speed of thought, we see it through the
Akashic Record, see it not just from the time that we were born but from the time that we
planned how and where we would be born. Then, having that knowledge, having seen our
errors, we plan again and try once more just like a child at school seeing what went wrong
with answers to the examination papers, and taking the examination all over again.
Naturally enough, it takes a long long training before one can see the Akashic Record, but
with training, with practice and faith it can be done and is indeed being done constantly.
Do you think, maybe, we should pause a moment and discuss this thing called faith?
Faith is a definite thing which can and must be cultivated in much the same way as a habit
or a hothouse plant must be cultivated. Faith is not as hardy as a weed, it is indeed more
like a hothouse plant. It must be pampered, must be fed, must be looked after. To obtain
faith we must repeat, and repeat, and repeat our affirmation of faith so that the knowledge
of it is driven into our sub-conscious. This sub-conscious is nine-tenths of us, that is, by
far the greater part of us. We often liken it

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unto a lazy old man who just does not want to be disturbed. The old man is reading his
newspapers, perhaps he has his pipe in his mouth and his feet are encased in comfortable
slippers. He is really tired of all the racket, all the noise, all the distraction constantly going
on around him. Through years of experience he has learned to shield himself from all
except the most insistent interruptions and distractions. Like an old man who is partly
deaf he doesn't hear when he is called the first time. The second time he is called he
doesn't hear because he doesn't want to hear, because he thinks it might be work for him,
or some interruption of his lazy leisure. The third time he starts to get irritable because
the caller is disturbing his trend of thoughts while he is perhaps more anxious to read the
racing results than to do anything which requires effort. Keep on and on repeating your
faith and then the old man will come to life with a jerk, and when the knowledge is
implanted in your sub-conscious then you will have automatic faith. We must make it clear
here that faith is not belief; you can say I believe that tomorrow is Monday, and that
means a certain thing. You would not say I have faith that tomorrow is Monday because
that would mean a completely different thing. Faith is something which usually grows up
with us. We become a Christian, or a Buddhist, or a Jew because, usually, our parents
were Christians, Buddhists, or Jews. We have faith in our parents we believe that what
our parents believed was correct and so our faith became the same as our parents'.
Certain things which cannot definitely be proved while upon the Earth require faith, other
things which can be proved can be believed or disbelieved. There is a distinction, and one
should become aware of that distinction.
But, first of all, what do you want to believe, what is it that requires your faith? Decide
what it is that needs faith, think of it from all angles. Is it faith in a religion, faith in an
ability? Think of it from as many angles as you can, and then, making sure that you think
of it in a positive way, affirm state to yourself that you can do this or that, or that
you will do this or that, or that you firmly believe in this or that. You must keep on affirming
it. Unless you do so affirm you will never have faith. Great religions have faithful
followers. Those faithful followers are ones who have been to church, or chapel, or
synagogue, or temple, and by repeated prayers, not merely on their own behalf but by
others also,

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their sub-conscious has become aware that there are some things which must be a faith.
In the Far East there are such things as mantras. A person will say a certain thing a
mantra and say it again and again, and repeat it time after time. Possibly the person
will not even know what the mantra is about! That does not matter because the founders
of the religion who composed the mantra will have arranged it in such a way that the
vibrations engendered in repeating the mantra knock into the subconscious the thing
desired. Soon, even though the person does not fully understand the mantra, it becomes
part of the person's subconscious, and the faith then is purely automatic. In much the
same way, if you repeat prayers time after time you begin to believe them. It is all a
matter of getting your sub-conscious to understand and to co-operate, and once you have
faith then you do not have to bother any more because your sub-conscious will always
remind you that you have this faith, and that you can do those certain things.
Repeat to yourself time after time that you are going to see an aura, that you are going
to be telepathic, that you are going to do this or that, whatever it is that you particularly
want to do. Then in time you will do this. All successful men, all those who become
millionaires or inventors are people who have faith in themselves, they have faith that
they can do what they set out to do, because believing in themselves first, believing in
their own powers and abilities, they then generated the faith which made that belief come
true. If you keep on telling yourself that you are going to succeed, you will succeed, but
you will only succeed if you keep on with your affirmation of success and not let doubt
(the negative of faith) intrude. Try this affirmation of success, and the results will truly
astonish you.
You may have heard of people who can tell another person what they were in a past life,
what they were doing. That comes from the Akashic Record, for many people in their
sleep travel into the astral and see the Akashic Record. When they return in the morning,
as we have already discussed, they may bring back a distorted memory, so while some of
the things they say are true, others are distortions. You will find that most of the things
you hear about relate to suffering. People seem to have been torturers, seem to have
been all sorts of things mainly bad.

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That is because we come to this Earth as to a school, we have to remember at all times
that people have to have hardship to purge them of their faults, in much the same way
that ore is placed in a furnace and subjected to intense heat so that the dross or wastage
rises to the surface where it can be skimmed off and discarded. Humans have to undergo
stresses which drive them almost, but not quite, to the breaking point so that their
spirituality may be tested, and their faults may be eradicated. People come to this Earth
to learn things, and people learn much more quickly and more permanently by hardship
than by kindness.
This is a world of hardship, it is a training school which is almost a reformatory, and
although there are rare kindnesses which shine out like the beam of a beacon light on a
dark night, much of the world is strife. Look at the history of nations if you dispute this,
look at all the incipient wars. It is indeed a world of impurity, and it makes it difficult for
Higher Entities to come here as they must in order to supervise what is going on. It is a
fact that a Higher Entity coming to this Earth must take up some impurity which will act
almost as an anchor, and keep them in contact with the Earth. The High Entity who comes
here cannot come in his own pure, unsullied form, because he could not stand the sorrows
and the trials of the Earth. So be careful when you think that such-and-such a person
cannot be so high as some people say because he is too fond of this or too fond of that.
As long as he does not drink, then he might be quite high. Drink, though, cancels out all
high abilities.
Many of the greatest clairvoyants and telepaths have some physical affliction because
suffering can often increase the rate of vibration and confer telepathy or clairvoyance upon
the sufferer. You cannot know of a person's spirituality by just looking at him. Do not
judge a person to be an evil person because he is sick; the sickness may have been taken
on deliberately in order that the person can increase his or her rate of vibration for a
special task. Do not judge a person harshly because he or she uses a swear word, or does
not altogether act as you think that a Great Person should act. It may indeed be a Great
Person who is using swear words or some other vice in order to have an anchor to enable
him or her to remain upon the Earth. Again, provided that the person does not engage in
drink, the person may quite definitely be the Higher

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Entity which you originally thought him to be. There is much impurity on Earth, and all
that is impure decays, only the pure and the incorruptible lives on. That is one of the
reasons why we come to Earth; in the spirit world beyond the astral you cannot have
corruption, you cannot have evil on the Higher Planes, so people come to Earth to learn
the hard way. And again, and again, a Great Entity coming to Earth will take a vice or an
affliction, knowing that as he or she came for a special task, that affliction or vice will not
be held as karma (we shall deal with that later) but instead be regarded as a tool, as an
anchor, which passes away as corruption along with the physical body.
There is a further point which we are going to make, and it is this; great reformers in this life are sometimes
those who in a previous life were great offenders in the line in which he or she now reforms. Hitler,
undoubtedly will come back as a great reformer. Many of the people from the Spanish Inquisition have come
back as great reformers. It is a thought worth thinking of. Remember the Middle Way is the way in which to
live. Do not be so bad that you have to suffer for it later, and if you are so pure, so holy that everyone is beneath
you, then you cannot stay on this Earth. Fortunately, however, no one is THAT pure!

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